


Fixing a White Boy

by EysabellePerfume



Series: Quick Bright Things [1]
Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, May/December Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 23:20:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 10,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14091918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EysabellePerfume/pseuds/EysabellePerfume
Summary: Princess Shuri develops a thing for Everett K Ross. But is it destiny, hormones, or just the champagne? NOTE: For the purposes of this story, Shuri is 16 by the ancient calendar* of Wakanda, where a year is 18 months. Ergo, she is 24, i.e. a grown-ass woman capable of consent. (Also, not her first rodeo.) *Yeah, made that up.New! New! New! No time to slog through pesky plot? Allow us to recommend our "Show Me the Smut!" package, consisting of Chapters 9 - 12, for the busy reader on the go!





	1. Prologue

_I began this story in the belief that Shuri was 24, the same age as Letitia Wright, and only later discovered that the character is supposed to be 16 (!). In order to align my head canon with the canon, I decided that a year in the ancient calendar of Wakanda consists of 18 months. Arbitrary, but necessary. So Shuri is 16 Wakanda years old, and 24 Everywhere-Else years old._

* * *

 

White boys ... Shuri was fascinated by them and their strangeness, their exotic skin that glowed like the moon, their hair that slipped through the fingers like fine linen thread. The first one was beautiful, undeniably so. Though older than her father's father, he wore the appearance of youth circling upward, as on a wheel, toward an intriguing maturity. He might in this respect have been a figure from a half-forgotten myth. She might have been healing a god, or a monster, or something in between. And so there was, at first, dread in her fascination. To make up for it, she acted with efficiency and maintained an outward air of detachment. Gods and monsters were confused by indifference. It diminished their power.

This one, the second one, perhaps twice Shuri's age, was on the downward trajectory of the wheel ... face marked and creased, hair greying, body relaxing toward agedness. And yet he possessed a beauty of his own that both intrigued her and excited a tenderness in her. And so she was tender as she treated him, consciously tender, letting the efficient scientist be subordinate to the curious inventor. For all invention begins with curiosity. And what else is love, but the daydreaming heart's invention?


	2. Chapter 2

In the pantheon of words which Shuri despised, "destiny" was probably at the top. It was all very well to speak of destiny when discussing the order of succession in Wakanda. In that case, one could argue that biology was destiny (until such time as somebody decided to overthrow the government and impose a new set of rules, which was quite unlikely).

A spiritual person might conclude, in Shuri's case, that naming was destiny. Her parents had chosen to name her after her father's great-aunt Shuri, a great doctor and researcher who single-handedly protected the borders of Wakanda from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. But young Shuri would still have been called Shuri, even had she gone into fashion design, mining engineering, or kitten juggling. And her character, curiosity, and aptitude would have yearned for the sciences even if she had been named after her mother (a splendid storyteller who could spin together signs and symbols and weave them into a most compelling narrative, but who was - let's be honest - rubbish at more technical pursuits).

When Queen Ramonda heard of the arrival of the first white boy (frozen though he was), her eyebrows raised. She wanted to know everything about him, and seemed to consider each detail in its turn as if examining fruit in the marketplace. His name appeared to disappoint her. His past as a warrior piqued her interest again. After a while, she had clearly lost interest and listened merely from politeness.

With the arrival of the second white boy, the badly wounded CIA agent who had stopped a bullet for Nakia, Mother once again arrived at Shuri's lab in a flurry of interest.

"Why do you even care, Mother?" Shuri asked. "What are these boys to you, after all?"

"Nothing," Queen Ramonda said. "They are nothing to me. But for you, they are your destiny."

Shuri rolled her eyes. "Mother, two white boys do not a destiny make. How many people have I healed?"

"Tell me his name," said the Queen.

"Everett K Ross."

"What does the 'K' stand for?" she asked eagerly.

"Kill me now," Shuri said to the ceiling.

"You are not too old for an hour in the Time-Out Chair," Ramonda said severely.

"I don't know, Mother. I have been trying to save his life. I don't need to know his middle name to do that. Ask T'Challa, or look it up yourself."

Queen Ramonda gave her daughter a symbolic swat on the bottom and stalked regally from the lab. But she had planted a seed, without knowing she had done so, and one that rooted quickly. For not half an hour later, an exasperated Shuri tapped her AV Kimoyo bead and ran a search.

"Kenneth."

 


	3. Chapter 3

Shuri walked quietly into the infirmary space of her lab and stood over the medical bed where Everett Kenneth Ross lay deep in sleep. She didn't need to be there. She had rounded several hours earlier with her medical team and been satisfied with his vitals and with the knitting of his wound. By the time he awoke, he should have only residual tenderness to show for a wound that ought to have killed him (and would have anywhere but Wakanda). But being in possession now of his full name made her curious about him. She wanted to look at him as he slept, and really see him.

She admired the subtle cleft in his chin, which, if more pronounced, might have appeared cartoonishly macho. His tilted nose and his ears made him look vulnerable. His mouth, even relaxed in sleep, seemed to promise danger. The closely cropped hair at his temples blended into a day's stubble, sparkling silver in the infirmary light. Without really thinking, she reached out and drew her index finger from his temple across his cheekbone. Warm skin. Whiskers rough under her fingertip. A fine muscle under his skin twitched, and she quickly pulled back her hand, ashamed that she had touched him in such an unprofessional manner. But still he slept.

"Who are you?" she asked softly. "You saved Nakia, who is dearer to me than a sister. It is only right, then, that I saved you. That is basic moral arithmetic. But who _are_ you?"

She knew some history of his CIA. She knew of its role in the Congo Crisis. Had Wakanda been fully open to the world's eyes, would her grandfather have been executed, as Lumumba was? The idea was horrifying to her.

"If you work to protect the power of the coloniser, doesn't that make you a coloniser yourself? Shouldn't that make us enemies?"

"But I look at you," she said, "and I can see the boy you were, and the boy who might still live inside you. I see him in the relaxation of your face. I hear him in your steady breathing. You breathe like an innocent. I want to kiss your closed eyelids, the way my mother kissed mine each night, so that they might never open to the sight of evil."

"My mother is of a mystical bent, and terribly romantic. She believes you are my destiny, though she is being uncharacteristically cagey as to the precise details, and I certainly don't want to encourage her by asking. Believe me, if ever I gave way to her she'd be having my horoscope cast and my shells read and my life as a rational and scientific being would be as good as over. You see, she wanted me to take after her. But T'Challa did, really. And as much as she loves him -" She laughed in a gloating, conspiratorial way. "- she loves me _better_."

It suddenly occurred to Shuri that she was, at the moment, behaving very much like her mystical and romantic mother. Talking to a sleeping man, indeed! She had much better things to be doing with her time.

Such as going back to her desk and searching for more information about him ...


	4. Chapter 4

_"Her hair was long, her foot was light,_   
_And her eyes were wild."_

-John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

Everett awoke in a place he'd never seen before, on a contraption, half computer, half bed, that he was also certain he'd never seen before. The subtly patterned, black-on-black gown he wore completed the strangeness of his situation. And yet his head was clear enough that he remembered Busan and remembered having been shot in the back.

He sat up and stretched, and tried to reach the place where he was sure a wound ought to be. He'd had minor bruises that hurt worse than this. For one disoriented moment, he wondered if he had been placed in suspended animation and had awakened in the future. But when he glanced at his watch, which was still (unaccountably) on his wrist, the date displayed was one day after that on which he had interrogated Ulysses Klaue.

The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and he shook off a shudder.

_Pay attention. Where are you? And is anybody here with you?_

He picked up the faint rustling of cloth, the shift of springs in a chair seat, and then a brief bar of a hummed tune. Female. Probably young. He found her easily. She sat at a work table, tinkering with something. Her long braids spilled down from a topknot. She wore red and black, which contrasted with the mostly pristine neutrals of the lab. The white-beaded black armbands around her upper arms looked like shoulder straps that had slipped, and Everett felt a strong impluse to slide them back up to her shoulders. But maybe it was more the desire to run his hands up the soft dark skin of her bare arms.

And where did that come from? Disturbed, he spoke more sharply than he otherwise might have. "All right. Where am I?"

The young woman started and glanced at him disapprovingly over her shoulder. "Don't scare me like that, coloniser!"

"Colo- wh - my name is Everett." When you wake up in a strange place that might be a lab, or might be an art gallery, or might be the lair of a playful and erratic supervillain, you tend to understand that caution won't get you very far and that you might as well be direct.

"Yes, I know." She turned her attention back to the gadget on the table. "Everett Ross. Former Air Force pilot and now CIA."

"Right. Okay." He looked around him. "Is this Wakanda?"

"No," she said. "It's Kansas."

We're not in Kansas anymore. Playful and erratic then. But supervillain?

"How long ago was Korea?"

"Yesterday."

"I don't think so. Bullet wounds don't just magically heal overnight."

She finally turned to fully face him. She smiled, and then she laughed. "They do here. But not by magic. By technology. I healed you myself."

Everett's heart thumped. It wasn't just the woman's beauty that startled him, though she was undeniably beautiful, in a way that was both idiosyncratic and breathtaking. But the fire in her eyes was like nothing he'd ever seen before. It seemed to show him everything he needed to know about her: that her imagination and curiosity knew no bounds; and that she was able to liberate her ideas from her imagination into the physical world the same way Michaelangelo had been able to free David from an innocuous-seeming block of marble.

He was in the presence of genius.

"Thank you," he said, once he found his voice.


	5. Chapter 5

_His voice._

He thanked her, and his voice made the blood rush to her face so that she didn't dare continue to face him. She quickly turned her attention back to the piece of tech she'd been working on. Oh, Mother, Mother, she thought. How could you have given me such ideas? And so she replied flippantly, even though her flippancy embarrassed her and made her flush all the deeper because of it. She couldn't look at him, and she couldn't answer him civilly, because of destiny, and because she had touched his face as he slept.

"That's 'thank you, Princess' to you, Agent Ross," she had said.

"Princess... Princess Shuri. Of course. Forgive me, Your Highness. I didn't know."

"Why 'of course?'What have you heard of me out there in the wide world?"

"That you're a great beauty."

Shuri snickered. "Is that right? What else?"

"That you have a fondness for French champagne, Korean pop music, and American comic books."

"Mmm," she said, nodding. "So my mother was _not_ the only person in the whole entire world who saw that microscopic paragraph about me in _Paris Match_. I am impressed. What else have you heard?"

"I'm afraid that's the extent of my knowledge," he said. "You are something of a mystery."

"Eh, I like that! Of course, nobody is less mysterious than I, but who am I to quibble?"

"Nobody knows you," he said. "Out there. Nobody knows who you really are. Nobody knows about -" He spread his arms to encompass the lab. "- this."

"You are the only one," she agreed. _The only one, and you came here to me, and I saved you, and now you are mine._

* * *

Hiking the rough mountain road, feet throbbing, shoulders heavy beneath the blanket, Shuri thought about those moments in her lab, right before the world went up in flames. _Trivial, trivial_ , she chastised herself. _How could I flirt with Agent Ross like that, as if the world were not about to go up in flames?_

She and Mother and Nakia, with Agent Ross in tow, fled to the mountains because there was no place else to flee. They fled with no time to mourn. How strange, how empty she felt - until she remembered with horrifying fidelity how Erik Killmonger, her cousin by blood, had thrown T'Challa from the falls as if he had been the rotting carcass of a sheep.

Of course, her mother's life was worth nothing at that point. Her life was worth nothing. Nakia's life was worth nothing. To witness the murder of Zuri, to witness the murder of her brother ... and to know that her pain was a sister's pain, but her mother's pain was past bearing ... to lose a husband, and a mere week later to lose a son. So she focused, for her mother's sake. She focused and she pushed away the pain. Everything depended upon it.

Scorning herself, she thought about those moments in the lab with Agent Ross, because the pain of self-contempt was easier to bear.

 


	6. Chapter 6

At 6,000 feet elevation, they had to stop. Mother was staggering rather than walking, and Agent Ross was showing signs of fatigue that Shuri attributed to his body's need to heal. Nakia went ahead to scout a resting place for them and returned mercifully quickly.

"There's a grotto perhaps 200 feet ahead. It's far enough off the trail that we might safely use our Kimoyo beads to generate heat without detection."

"Thank Bast," Mother said wearily. Shuri supported her the short distance to the grotto - more a notch in the mountain wall - and helped her to the ground, tucking her blanket beneath her. The three women each removed a bead and placed them in a circle. Soon, a warm blue glow spread and took away some of the chill.

"Try to sleep, Mother," Shuri said. "Even an hour will be healing to you. And you also, Agent Ross. My science is good, but your body did suffer trauma and must rest. Nakia and I will keep watch."

"My daughter ..."

"No, Mother. Just to sit and rest my feet is enough for me."

Agent Ross lay down with a grateful sigh. Not a minute later, he breathed the steady, restorative breath of sleep, broken occasionally by a snore. The snoring made Shuri smile in spite of herself, and in spite of the pain that washed over her like a tide. She smiled, and then she uttered a single sob. She glanced quickly at Mother, hoping she hadn't heard. But Mother was gazing at the sleeping man with a thoughtful expression on her face. Perhaps she was remembering what she had said about him, before the world went up in flames. Prior to this, she hadn't seemed to remember him at all. _Who is this man?_ she had demanded.

"Who is this man?" Mother whispered, sending a shiver up Shuri's spine.

"We told you, Mother. He is Everett K Ross, a CIA agent. He saved Nakia's life in Busan, so T'Challa brought him back and I healed him." Shuri cringed at the note of hysteria in her own voice.

"Hush," said Mother. "Hush, my daughter. I will tell you a story now. I will tell you the story of your Great-Great-Aunt Shuri and the Scottish pilot, Lieutenant Alexander Keats."


	7. Chapter 7

"It is well that he sleeps," said Mother, nodding toward Agent Ross. "This story is for our family."

"Shall I go, Queen Mother?" asked Nakia.

"No, my dear. In my heart, you are family and forever will be. Now listen ... it was a hundred years ago and more that a double calamity befell the land outside Wakanda - the first, a great war that tore at the world and drank its blood, the second, a terrible pandemic that could kill those it infected in less than a day. The war devoured a generation of young men. The pandemic, too, fed upon the young. The cries of millions of mothers shook the very foundations of the world ... but not in Wakanda.

"In those days, your Great-Great-Aunt Shuri rode the frontiers on her dapple grey mare, Nesibindi, investigating and healing the illnesses of men and women who fled there from the war. She treated army deserters - British, German, Belgian, it mattered not to her. She treated colonised soldiers. She treated women and children whose villages had been destroyed in the fighting. Our frontiers have always been the face we show the world, and our way of hiding in plain sight. But for Shuri and scientists like her, they were also laboratories in which to quarantine and study the diseases and wounds of the outside world, in order to develop immunizations and treatments and increase the store of Wakanda's medical knowledge."

Shuri tried to hide her impatience. She had known all this since childhood. As her Great-Great-Aunt's namesake it was part of her personal mythology. Nakia, though bereaved and exhausted, listened respectfully. Surely Shuri could do as much. But what good were stories to them now? A story would not feed them. A story would not carry them to safety. A story would not bring back T'Challa, or even avenge him.

"Mother -"

"Please," Mother said. "Please, Shuri." Her voice trembled. And Shuri understood that one thing a story might do was hold her mother together in the face of overwhelming grief.

Shuri bowed her head. "Forgive me, Mother. Please tell me about Shuri meeting the pilot."

Mother drew a shaky breath and slowly released it. "It was on a spring day of great beauty, when wildflowers perfumed the air. Shuri rode Nesibindi that day for pleasure, for freedom, to feel the sunlight on her head and have no worry of the strange disease that had suddenly appeared beyond the frontier. And yet her pleasant day of rest was spoiled, for she heard the sputter and whine of the colonisers' primitive aircraft. From atop a hillock, she saw it smear the sky with oily black smoke. It spiraled toward the earth, not two miles from her, and crashed.

"This war had given her and her fellow scientists opportunity to study kinds of trauma they had not seen before. Shuri clicked her tongue and rode Nesibindi toward the wreckage. She had no hope of finding a living human, but she might learn something of value from his corpse. She felt pity for the pilot of such a primitive craft - those in East Africa, she had learned from one of the British deserters, were deemed too ramshackle for the more important European theatres of war. The pilots of such craft, she was certain, must be either delusional or despairing to the point of suicide.

"And yet, when she was not a mile from the wreckage, she encountered the form of a man tangled in ropes and swaths of fabric ... a parachute, as she later learned. Shuri dismounted and knelt beside him. The man was unconscious, wounded, but alive."

Agent Ross snored once, loudly, and the sound shook Mother from her reverie. She spoke quickly now, not as a storyteller but as one desperate to impart information while she still had the chance. "He was a pilot of the British Royal Flying Corps, a native of Scotland far from home. Shuri learned this later, in one of the field hospitals she and others had established to treat the war wounded who found their way to Wakanda's frontiers.

"He was a boy of sixteen Wakandan years, and Shuri a woman of 30, and yet they fell in love. Despite differences in age, in culture, in social status, in almost everything, they fell in love. And the boy went on his knees before her and asked her to marry him."

"I thought Great-Great-Aunt Shuri never married," said Shuri.

"She never did," said Mother. "The boy, Alexander Keats, said 'I will marry you, and I will love you and remain here with you for all my days. But first I must fight for my mother, Scotland, and see her victorious and safe in peace.'"

"Oh," said Shuri. She had a good idea how the story would end.

"The boy left to rejoin the fight for his country. Shuri let him go, because she too understood love of country. Had she not dedicated her own life to keeping Wakanda from peril? But Alexander Keats never came back. A Wakanda war dog found the boy's grave in Aberdeen. He had been killed in action two weeks after leaving Shuri."

"So what?" Shuri said angrily.

"Shuri!" said Nakia.

"So what? So this, my daughter. In her grief, Great-Great-Aunt Shuri committed a great crime. She stole some of the heart-shaped herb and ground it into potion and drank it. She found herself on that hillock in high spring, when the breeze wafted the scent of wildflowers. Alexander Keats waited for her there. He said, 'We have been together before, and we will be together again. You are my love, and I am your destiny. Stay in the world and learn all that you can. And when the time is right, I will find you again and not leave you.'"

"Stop!" Shuri shouted, nearly in tears. "I cannot stand this! T'Challa is dead and you are telling me fairy stories!"

"I am telling you of your-"

Shuri quickly clapped her hands over her ears. "Do not say it!"

"-destiny."

"I am a scientist," Shuri said. Her tone was almost pleading. "I do not believe in destiny. I do not believe in reincarnation. I do not believe in - in -"

"Love? Because, my child, love is the only thing that survives."

"Shh!" said Nakia. "He awakens."

_He awakens._ But who was he?


	8. Chapter 8

Of course, the historians and the storytellers of Wakanda have recorded what happened next ... how the refugees were taken to the court of M'Baku, how Ramonda plead with the mountain king to accept the heart-shaped herb and save Wakanda from Erik Killmonger, and how M'Baku brought her to the sight she most longed for and least expected - her still-living son. T'Challa's resurrection from his bed of snow by the three most beloved women in his life - Mother, Sister, Lover - has taken on the quality of sacred myth. It is depicted in Wakandan art to this day as a scene of deep mysticism. When the mighty M'Baku and the faithful Everett are included in the scene, they are pictured turning their faces away in piety.

What the historians and the storytellers omit to mention, however, is Princess Shuri's refusal to utter a polite word to Everett K Ross, and the secret satisfaction she felt when M'Baku threatened to feed Ross to his children.

Of course it was petty of her. Agent Ross had nothing to do with her mother's story, nor her mother's mysticism, nor her mother's thoroughly unscientific belief system. Agent Ross was simply a white male in the wrong place at the wrong time, who _just happened_ to be a pilot, whom she _just happened_ to heal. And it _just happened_ that their ages were the inverse of the ages of Great-Great-Aunt Shuri and her long-dead Alexander Keats, and-

Shuri wanted to scream.

Instead, she indulged her pettiness and unjustly punished Agent Ross, because it was less painful than her doubt.

Not that Agent Ross was likely to even notice. And that was petty of her, too.

* * *

Later, during the Battle of Mount Bashenga, Shuri allowed herself a moment of concern over him. Though piloting the Royal Talon Flyer remotely, he still might have been killed or badly injured by the craft that attacked Shuri's lab. But he came through without a scratch, and was hailed a hero, to boot.

Perversely, this only annoyed her more.

* * *

After the healing of the wounded and the mourning of the dead, when Wakanda appeared to be stable once again, the council of elders advised King T'Challa to observe the protocol of the newly-coronated, as he had had no chance to do heretofore, and host a magnificent feast for the leaders and dignitaries of the five tribes. Birnin Zanda needed it. All of Wakanda needed it. After such a rupture, tradition would comfort and heal.

Shuri, who was avoiding the lab during repairs and sulking like an 8-year-old in her private suite at the palace, received news of the feast from Nakia with mixed feelings.

"Who will be there?" she asked sullenly.

"Everybody," said Nakia.

" _Everybody_?"

"Yes, everybody."

"But _everybody_?"

Nakia sighed. "Princess," she said. "You are not behaving like yourself. I have thought and thought, and I think I now understand why."

Shuri glanced up quickly, blood rushing to her face.

"You and I," said Nakia, "need to get absolutely, blisteringly drunk together."

Shuri was so relieved that she shouted with laughter.

Nakia laughed, too. "My champagne sister, we must celebrate! So be sure to come to the feast, else there will be nothing for me but palm wine."

Shuri hugged her and promised she would come.

"Oh," said Nakia, turning again at the doorway. "Make sure you dress in your finest. _Everybody_ has been asking about you for a week, and you want to look pretty for him, don't you?"

 


	9. Chapter 9

_"You probably think you experienced it all_  
_when you were young ..._  
_You probably expected one_  
_who grew up straight_  
_But I'll be crooked and torture you..."_

"Rum Pum Pum Pum," f(x). English translation

* * *

Shuri did not believe in destiny, but she did believe in hormones. Hormones, as she knew from personal experience, made one beautiful, randy, and incautious. Wakanda's superb contraceptives (male and female ... in order to conceive, both potential parents had to undertake a three-month course of hormones to nullify the contraceptive's effects) made this much less hazardous. Wakanda's superb vaccination program, too, had eradicated all STDs. But there were still dangers of the heart being tripped up. You could not vaccinate against human emotions. Desire was a door that could open to reveal fulfillment or rejection. It was always a risky undertaking.

Could she read Agent Ross properly? Did she know enough about him? All of his actions and words toward her had been respectful, distant-ish, really nothing even vaguely encouraging. But could not the same be said of her actions and words toward him? (Well, barring the respectful part. She had, after all, been either appallingly rude to him or avoided him altogether.) But Nakia did say he had been asking about her. And Nakia had hinted ...

Oh, Bast! She desired him. She desired him so much that if she spent too much time thinking about him (and she always spent too much time thinking about him) she had difficulty walking. Her job tonight was to inspire the same debilitating desire in him.

So Shuri tore through her closets looking for just the right outfit. Just because she was a scientist didn't mean she lacked in taste. She was a fashion icon in Birnin Zana, especially among the more technologically-savvy young. But her wardrobe was not exactly sexy ... at least, not in the way she wanted it to be if she were to attract the attention of the man she'd so thoroughly ignored. She tried and discarded more than a dozen looks before she sat down on the floor in disgust, tapped a Kimoyo bead and ordered a bottle of champagne. What to do?

Fortified by a glass of Bollinger, she attacked the closets again. And she discovered, hidden between two more substantial garments, a tiny silk slip dress that she'd bought on her one trip to Paris but had never had the courage to wear, and so had subsequently forgotten. It was the simplest garment imaginable - no lace, no embellishments, simply a crepe-backed black satin with a dull sheen. Yet it was cut nearly to the nipples in the front, and to the waist in the back. Nobody could wear this with a bra. Shuri acknowledged, with more than a touch of self-satisfaction, that she didn't need a bra. She stripped to her panties and slid the dress on over her head.

"Oh, yes," she said.

Then she thought of her mother, and her brother, and everybody else who would be at the feast. It would not do to scandalize all of Wakanda. Suddenly inspired, she pulled out a necklace she seldom wore, made of dozens of strands of tiny gold beads. The strands were of varying lengths and would spill over her breasts like a sunlit waterfall (yes, she really did think that). She owned matching earrings which hung to her shoulders, and a multi-stranded anklet. Putting on a pair of barely-there gold sandals, she deemed her outfit perfect and toasted her reflection with another glass of champagne.

"Everett Kenneth Ross, you will not know what hit you."

* * *

Everett Kenneth Ross didn't know what hit him. For reasons passing his understanding, M'Baku had taken a sudden shine to him and collared him as soon as he entered the vast and grand dining hall.

"Come and meet my wife and children! Children, here is your dinner!" And M'Baku roared with laughter. (The children, a handsome trio of youngsters fidgeting in their finery, rolled their eyes in a way that suggested the Dad Jokes were in steady and unwelcome supply at home.)

Everett tried to keep track of the conversation that ensued, tried to be attentive and polite to M'Baku's wife, tried to pull up every ounce of diplomacy he'd ever practiced, but he could not keep his eyes from scanning the room, looking for a particular young woman. Nakia, stunning in green, caught his eye and winked. He nodded and smiled in return, but mouthed "help me!" and hoped none of M'Baku's family noticed. Nakia smiled, bit her lower lip, and shook her head negative. She must go pay her respects to her king. Everett scowled at her and mouthed "thanks a lot."

Suddenly, the din of voices in the great hall grew quieter.

"My, my," said M'Baku's wife. "What has come over our little tomboy princess?"

Everett looked quickly.

" _Who_ has come over her, more likely," said M'Baku, smiling broadly and jabbing Everett in the ribs.

His wife swatted him. "M'Baku! The children!"

"I -" Everett couldn't find words. He wasn't sure he had a voice, either.

He knew Shuri was beautiful. He'd felt her beauty and been moved by it in ways that disturbed him, given that she was only sixteen years old. But that beauty had been animated by playfulness, by passion for her work, and lately, by a scorn he didn't know how he'd deserved. But tonight her beauty was smoldering, openly sexual. More nude than clothed, she seemed to be issuing an invitation. But to whom? There were certainly a number of handsome young men at the feast. Which one did she have her eyes on? He could make a game of it: _Guess Shuri's Type_. But somehow, the thought depressed him.

Then her gaze met his, steady, sensual, commanding. He swallowed. He looked behind him. He looked back at her. Still she stared, but a small, remotely feline smile raised one corner of her mouth.

"As I suspected," said M'Baku. "The princess cannot take her eyes off you. Lucky man."

"You've got it all wrong. I'm not - we're not - she's only _sixteen_ , for Bast's sake!"

M'Baku roared with laughter. "That is her age by the ancient calendar of Wakanda! As you reckon years, she is 24."

Everett's relief was instant, palpable, but short-lived. "But I'm still nearly twice her age."

M'Baku shrugged. "The chosen playmate is older, the chosen playmate is younger."

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"Only that when a princess invites you to play, it is considered polite to accept the invitation."


	10. Chapter 10

She beckoned to him slowly, exaggerating the movement. He blinked and pointed to his chest. Her chin raised, then dropped. He pointed to his watch: _now?_ she rolled her eyes and walked slowly, deliberately to the doorway. There she paused, looked back at him, and raised an impatient eyebrow. He made an apologetic mouth and made his way toward her through the crowd. It would be an exaggeration to say that all eyes were on them, but a good many were. Everett blushed like a schoolboy.

Trying to keep his tone light, he asked Shuri, "Can I help you, Princess?" He was more than aware of her heat, the amber perfume she wore, and the nothing of fabric and beads that separated him from her breasts, her belly, her vulva.

"With me, Agent Ross," she said. She took his fingers in her hot hand and led him away from the great hall.

"You do know your brother, the _king_ ," he emphasized the word 'king', "has got a feast on. I suspect he expects your presence."

"Oh. Pfffft. He can wait juuuuuust a minute."

"Where are we going?"

She stopped walking and leaned close. " _Ssssssssssecret_ ," she said. She placed her index finger over her lips, and then, enticingly, over his. _Do not kiss her finger_ , he commanded himself.

When she took her finger away, he said, "Are you, by any chance, drunk, Princess?"

"No." she said. "I am _the_ Drunk Princess. And don't you forget it!"

He smiled. "My apologies."

She walked away again. "Follow! Follow! And," she said, "I am _your_ Drunk Princess."

"Mine exclusively?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. But if I command, you shall do what?"

"Obey."

"Very good. I do believe you will go far in life, with the proper training."

She had, by this time, led him into a bedchamber. He was fairly certain it was her bedchamber. Two empty bottles of Bollinger lolled on the floor, along with the wreckage of an extensive wardrobe. Bed unmade, bedcovers thrashed this way and that. The colors of the room were warm, red-browns, carmine, gold. Her lab had been designed for business. Her bedchamber had been arranged for pleasure.

"Would you like a glass of champagne?" she asked, in a tone that seemed to coyly play at grand courtesan.

"No, thank you," he said, smiling gently.

"Quite all right. I do believe I drank it all anyway."

"Princess, you said you had a secret to tell me?"

"Oh! Yes, indeed. I," she said, with the air of one imparting arcane knowledge, "have seen you naked."

Everett couldn't help but laugh, ruefully. "I suppose you have."

"Quite, quite naked. Not a stitch on you."

"And?"

"And what?"

"I just thought there might be more to this confession."

"Confession? Confession? Have you never heard of doctor-patient confidentiality? There will be no confession!"

"Not even if I'm the patient?"

"Oh. Oh, yes. I'd forgotten. Yes, that was why I saw you naked. And that is very likely the reason why you have not seen me naked."

"I must admit, I have not."

"But you have imagined it, yes?"

"Your dress leaves little to the imagination."

"Mmm ... I think you will like my _little_ very, very much."

"And I think," said Everett, "that you've had just a bit too much to drink -"

She snapped her fingers. "A- _ha_! Now I remember! I've got something to show you. It's my latest invention. You will be amazed." She opened the drawer of a little table by her bed and took out a vial of purple liquid. She waved it too close to his eyes. He blinked in defense and drew back his head. "Can you guess what this is?"

"No idea."

" _Pus. Of. Rat. Ass_ ," she whispered menacingly.

"Ah ... how ... pleasant."

"Refined and enhanced. It's an antidote to drunkeness!" she exclaimed in triumph. "And now I will demonstrate it for you." She unstoppered the vial and drank down the purple liquid, and promptly burped. "Excuse me."

"How long does it take to work?" he asked.

She doubled over, wheezing and snorting with laughter. "Oh, coloniser," she gasped. "It was really imbe wine! You are so gullible! But absolutely adorable! Or, as they say in your country, adorkable!" She was so pleased with the American slang, which she had only just remembered, that she chanted it, swaying her shoulders and hips to the inherent beat.

"Princess, I really think we should return to the feast." He hated saying it. He very nearly didn't. Everything in him wanted to slide the straps of that tiny dress off her shoulders, back her toward the bed, and lay her down. But enough of him knew that she'd had too much to drink ... certainly too much to consent. And when the time came, if the time came, that he lay her down, he wanted her to be fully present for the experience.

"But we're alone! And I have seen you naked, but you have not seen me naked, and it is neither fair nor right!"

Everett didn't drink, but he'd been around people who did. There was a certain stubborn stage in drunkeness, where no reason could penetrate. He hated what he was about to do, knowing that it was perhaps unnecessarily cruel. But he had to rescue both Princess Shuri and himself from a dangerous situation.

"Shuri," he said, keeping his tone gentle, "have you never noticed my ring?" He held up his left hand, where a simple gold band encircled his ring finger.

Shuri rolled her eyes. "Of course," she said. "It is the ring of your father."

Very well, then. Time to lie with the truth. "Princess, this is a wedding ring."

She glanced from the ring back to him, then back to the ring. Her mouth formed a silent "Oh."

* * *

_Wedding ring._ The phrase was practically an antidote to drunkeness. She knew about wedding rings. Of course she knew. She just hadn't thought. What was it that Mother always told her? "Sometimes you are the most foolish genius I have ever met."

"Ah. Well, but I knew that. I was just testing to see what kind of man you are. And you have passed with flying colors. You are, indeed, a good man. And that is why we dressed you in our tribal black. Because you are worthy and good and also married. How proud your dear wife must be! Is she a pilot like you? Wait - don't answer. She will tell me herself some day. And now I must - I must do something technological. Good night, Agent Ross."

She pushed him toward and out the door of her bedchamber, shut the door, and locked it. When she was certain he had gone, she shrank down upon the floor and wept, rocking back and forth because she was too big to run and ask her mother to rock her.


	11. Chapter 11

So much for destiny. The scientist in her had triumphed after all.

Hooray.

Shuri considered ordering up another bottle of champagne, but decided against it. Champagne was, for her, a manifestation of delight. She didn't want to taint it by drinking it in sorrow, or anger, or disgust. Of course, right now she was feeling all three in a rapidly recurring cycle. She had made a fool of herself, first by ignoring Agent Ross and then by throwing herself at him. She had let her mother's story get to her, after all. She had let her hormones overcome her better judgement.

Head in her hands, her tears drying on her face, she considered the white boy, her second white boy, who was not hers after all. She thought of him objectively, in the sharp light of his rejection. During their journey to the mountains he had been there, ready to support her, ready to follow commands, unobtrusive but quick to serve. And he had served bravely, foolishly, and well.

He hadn't needed to. He hadn't needed to save Nakia's life, either. But he had. And this seemed so different from what she knew of the CIA and its workings. It could all be a front, she supposed. He could be playing a long game. But there were too many variables out of his control, first and foremost surviving being shot in the first place.

One thing she knew for certain: he had done none of it for her sake. He had just done it because that was the kind of man he was. Because that was the kind of man he was, he stayed faithful to his wife. And she had to recognize that if he were the type of man to be unfaithful she wouldn't have wanted him anyway. Such a conundrum. Nobody ever said it was easy to be good.

Her head ached from weeping. She had no energy to undress, no energy to lift the beads from her neck, no energy to do anything but collapse on the bed, curl into the fetal position, and sleep. Thank Bast she slept easily.

* * *

Troubled and guilty, Everett returned to the feast. He was a diplomat, after all, and diplomacy made for a comforting mask. He stayed for hours, chatting with dignitaries of the different tribes and avoiding Nakia's hostile, flashing eyes. T'Challa, on the other hand, was friendly in a regal way, as if nothing untoward had occurred between Everett and his sister, nor even could occur. M'Baku, first chance he got, called Everett a fool. Everett simply shrugged.

It was time to go back. He'd been away too long. He had a career. He had a life, such as it was - one of boredom, loneliness, and hunger.

_Is this Wakanda?_

_No. It's Kansas._

_I don't think we're in Kansas any more._ He suddenly realized that his world had been a series of Kansases, flat, bleak, dreary shades of black, white and grey. When he woke up in Wakanda, he had finally stepped into the Land of Oz, and it not only dazzled him, but made his heart ache, because for the first time since early childhood, he felt he had come home. Even as he and the three women had fled Erik Killmonger, he had felt alive and strangely at peace.

And his hunger ... he hadn't even been aware of it until he first saw Shuri dressed in red, with black straps around her upper arms.

Later that night, in his borrowed room, he twisted the wedding ring off his finger and held it up to the light. He had married young, his second year in the Air Force Academy. His wife left him two years later for the disc jockey at his best friend's wedding. They divorced, but he never took off the ring. He wore it as a reminder to never be fooled again. And he had guarded his heart, if not his libido, for half his life.

Now his heart and his libido were in accord. They wanted one thing. They wanted Shuri.

His hunger for Shuri was like his hunger for Wakanda itself. She was Wakanda. She was home.

* * *

She awoke from a dreamless night and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face and run a tub. Before she could undress and step into the bath, however, she heard a knock on her door.

"Who is it?"

"It's me. Everett. Agent Ross."

The blood flooded her face. To cover her intense mortification, she said, as casually as she could, "Oh. Coloniser."

"Right. Coloniser. May I come in?"

She opened the door a crack. He smiled at her. He held a tray. Scent of delicious food and more delicious coffee.

"I brought you breakfast and coffee. If you'll let me in, that is. Or I can leave it outside your door."

She opened the door wider. "Bring it in. Is there enough for two?"

"Have you got company?"

"Only you."

* * *

She hadn't changed out of her tiny dress. Barefoot, she looked even more delicious than she had the night before. But there was some preliminary business to discuss first.

"Are you still drunk?" he asked.

She raised an eyebrow. "Are you still married?"

He smiled. "How's your hangover?"

"I don't have a hangover. How is your wife?"

"I don't have a wife."

She appeared momentarily taken aback, but recovered quickly. "Ah. Your husband?"

"No. I don't have one of those, either."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Are you a Catholic priest?"

He couldn't help but laugh, though he tried to suppress it. "Bast, no." Funny how that expression sprang so readily to his lips these days. "And I'm fairly certain you aren't either, but will you hear my confession anyway?"

"Pour me my coffee first," said Shuri. Everett obliged. She sipped it gratefully and sighed.

Everett told her of his short-lived, unhappy marriage, and she listened with narrowed eyes. "Why didn't you tell me this last night? Why did you allow me to believe you were still married?"

"Because I was a coward. Because I knew I couldn't be with you last night - not honorably, Shuri - and it seemed easier to pretend I was married than to ask you to wait."

She sprang to her feet. "You are a wicked bastard and I wish I had never met you."

Everett rose more slowly. "Do you mean that, Shuri?" He put a hand on her shoulder. The other slid beneath her heavy braids to the soft nape of her neck.

She took a step toward him and cradled his face in her hands. "Yes. I mean it. I mean it sincerely."

His hands slid to her waist, then her hips. He pulled her to him, hard. She gasped out loud and pressed into him. They were much the same height. Lust met lust perfectly, as if their bodies had been designed specifically for each other.

"Are you certain?" he whispered.

"I wish I had let you die," she whispered back, her lips tickling his ear. She was all heat, all sex, speaking to him hatefully because it turned her on and because she knew it turned him on, too. Sex was a dance. Sex was theater. Sex was everything.

"Then fuck me to death, little princess."


	12. Chapter 12

_Her eyes narrow, and her fingernails dig into the back of his scalp. "I am not just any little princess," she says. "I am_ your _little princess."_

_"Mine exclusively?" He doesn't care that he's letting his greed show. He feels like a wolf, primed to devour her whole._

_She regards him with her head tilted to one side. The gesture is not coy, but deliberately provocative. She is appraising his worthiness. "Maybe. Maybe not. If I command, you shall do what?"_

_"Obey."_

_"_ Wholly _. You must obey me_ wholly _."_

_He thinks at first she has said 'holy.' No longer a wolf, but a sacrifice. Everything that she says, ever gesture, every breath, arouses him almost past bearing._

_"I will obey you, wholly."_

_She doesn't kiss him. She simply cradles his face in her hands, fingers spread wide, and looks at him. Looks into him._

_"Then listen to me," she says. "You must not touch me. You must not kiss me. You must not move unless I move you. And you must not say a word, or even make a sound. If you consent, nod once."_

_Enchanted, he nods._

_"Now, give me your safe word," she says. "Lean close and whisper it in my ear."_

_He obeys her. His word is 'M'Baku.' She almost snorts in laughter, but bites her lip and keeps her face stern._

_"If I do anything that you do not want, simply speak your safe word and I will stop. Do you understand?"_

_Again, he nods. He can smell the perfume at the pulse points of her wrists - copal and myrrh. He adores her skin, burnt umber dusted with fine gold; the tiny, crescent-moon scar on her forehead; the fine, damp tendrils of her baby hair; the subtly oblique line of her eyelids; the almost childlike upward tilt of her nose; her luscious lips that beg to be bitten and sucked like ripe fruit._

_Her fingers slide from his face to his neck, to the collar of his tunic. Without breaking her gaze, she finds his buttons and, unhurriedly, she undoes them. She opens his tunic and slides it off his shoulders. It falls to the floor with a cloth sigh. She reaches lower now and unfastens his trousers. Her hand barely brushes his insistent cock. She leads him forward so that he may step out of his crumpled trousers. Then she circles him, slowly - a priestess circling her victim, a panther circling her prey. She makes a sweet sound, half sigh, half moan, at the sight of his cock. She touches the wet tip with her forefinger, and then brings her fingertip to her lips and sucks it._

_Then she turns and pulls the chair away from her dressing table and sets it in the middle of the floor._

_"Sit," she commands. He obeys her. He wishes to Bast she would take off her tiny dress, her waterfall of beads, and let him see her body. What she does, instead, is reach beneath the slip and slide off her panties. Then she comes to him, straddles him, takes his cock in one hand and lowers herself down on it. She takes him all the way with a gasp and a whimper. She looks at him almost pleadingly, as if she has been rendered helpless._

_"Oh, my sweet," she says, her voice low, almost purring. "Oh, my sweet sweet."_

_And then she begins to move on him. She doesn't post on him as if on horseback. She doesn't grind. There is no friction. She simply rocks in tiny, tiny movements, pressing down, releasing the pressure, pressing down again. Her lips part. Her breath catches. She stares deep into his eyes._

_"If you move your hips, I swear to Bast I will make you sorry for it," she whispers. "Right now you are nothing more than a glorious sex toy, and I am going to fetch myself on you. But listen, my sweet ... once I'm fetched, I'm yours to do what you want._ Anything _that you want. Do you understand?"_

_His eyes close. He swallows. He nods._

_"Good. Good, sweet boy." Then she leans close and whispers to him her own safe word: Wakanda._

_She doesn't kiss him. She barely touches him. She rocks, presses, releases. And as she does, she whispers a steady stream of voluptuous Wakandan obscenities. He doesn't understand the words, but he understands the tone. And she does not break his gaze the whole time._

_He can tell she's getting close. She seems no longer to see him but to see the universe at the other side of his eyes. He suppresses a gasp and tells himself,_ save it, stoke it. When she comes, she's yours.

_Then she stiffens, her back arches, and he can feel her orgasm bloom like a flower of fire around his cock._

_Even before the first aftershock, he has torn her dress down the front and flung it away. A spray of tiny golden beads that fly into the air and skitter across the floor. He grabs her, lifts her. Her legs instinctively wrap around him. And he slams her back into the wall. He fucks her, back-alley hard, hot and dirty. He fucks her like he wants to break her. And she won't say her safe word though she begs him to stop, because it's so hot to beg. And she bites his shoulder and screams into it because it's so hot to scream._

_And when she fetches him, he knows he will never let her go._

* * *

Thanks to Sarah Waters' _Fingersmith_ for the enchanting archaic English term for orgasm. I've been fond of "fetch" since first reading her novel. _  
_

 


	13. Chapter 13

Three days they spent in Shuri's suite of rooms. Shuri had tacked a sign to her door - "Unless you are a servant bearing food and drink, DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT DISTURBING!" She had also flung her Kimoyo beads into a drawer and locked it. When they needed sustenance, they called for food. When they needed sleep, they slept, limbs entwined. Sometimes they soaked together in the ostentatiously large bathtub, giving each other beards and bikinis and wizard hats made of bubble-bath suds. They talked. They laughed. And they took turns ravishing each other, sometimes tenderly, sometimes voraciously, but always with the unspoken fear that each time might be the last. Because neither were quite able to forget the outside world and their responsibilities in it.

On the fourth day, they stole down to the royal stables and saddled a pair of fine Wakandan horses. It was spring, and Shuri craved the open air and the wildflowers that painted the hills. She was glad to discover that Everett was no stranger to riding. Once beyond the confines of the city, they raced, shouting to each other insults and encouragement. Far enough from potential prying eyes, they dismounted, hobbled their mounts, and made hungry love beneath the sun.

Exhausted by passion and drowsy in the sun, they lay in each other's arms. Everett plucked a flower growing nearby and tucked it behind Shuri's ear.

"What is this flower?" he asked.

"It's called freesia," said Shuri, with a luxuriant yawn. "Is it not sweet?"

He didn't answer, but appeared to be concentrating on a faraway sound. She watched him, curious, for she heard nothing out of the ordinary. Everett closed his eyes and said, haltingly, as if searching out each word,

"If Queens and Soldiers have play'd deep for hearts,  
"And won in love - behold the Queen, appressed  
"In idleness, languid on the hill  
"In freesia crowned, and gowned in waving grass,  
"And by her Scottish thistle there possessed -  
"Then war is but a toy, and death, delay.  
"His Queen has bade "return". He must obey."

"What is that?" asked Shuri.

"A very minor poem by a very minor poet, name of Keats, who happens to be a distant relative of mine."

"Not John Keats?"

"The first line, yes. Great artists steal, but so do mediocre ones. And Alexander Keats may have had other sterling qualities, but ..."

Shuri grew still when Everett spoke the name. She grew still, yet her heart banged in her rib-cage like a frantic wild creature. Everett, stroking her braids, didn't notice.

"My mother's maiden name is Keats. In fact, she named me Everett Keats Ross when I was born. But when I was three or four, a psychic told her that it was an inauspicious name. So she changed it to Kenneth. Which, if you listen to my mother, is the only reason I didn't die young."

"I don't understand." Shuri said, more to herself than to Everett.

"Alexander Keats died in the first World War. He was stationed in East Africa - Kenya or Uganda. I can't remember which. He fell in love with a local girl, his 'Queen,' and wrote a handful of poems about her, but never gave her proper name. She might have been Wakandan, for all that's known about her. They might have played together on this very hill, the way we're playing now. Poor guy never did return. I wonder how long his Queen waited for him?"

Despite the sunlight, Shuri shivered. Everett leaned up on his elbow and looked down into her face.

"What's the matter? You look troubled."

"It's nothing. Just promise me, you will never tell my mother what you just told me. Never tell another soul. Promise."

"I promise. But can you tell me why it's upset you so? Are you afraid it was an unequal relationship?"

She knew it was an unequal relationship, but not in the way he was imagining.

"I can't explain. Not now. Maybe not ever. Ev, I don't want us to be defined by people we have never known. I want us to be us. Individually and together, I want us to just be us."

He smiled at her. "Who else would we be?"


	14. Chapter 14

"You must understand that you are no longer merely yourselves, if, indeed, you ever were. Shuri, you are Wakanda. Agent Ross, you are the United States. To believe otherwise is to be willfully naive."

T'Challa, seated on the throne as King rather than brother, spoke not angrily. His words were simply matter-of-fact. Shuri felt she would have rather faced his anger instead.

Okoye and one of her lieutenants had been waiting for them when they returned the horses to the stables. The King would see them both. _Now_. They were disheveled, and the now-wilted freesia blossom hung limp from behind Shuri's ear. The two of them smelled of horse, sweat, meadow grass and love. Whatever the King had in mind, the two of them would be at a distinct psychological disadvantage. Everett entered the council chamber cool and in control. Shuri entered defensive and somewhat guilty. Thank Bast it was just T'Challa, Mother, and Nakia, rather than the full council.

T'Challa began by asking after their health. Were they both quite well? They had each been incommunicado for several days, and the King was naturally worried. Everett stayed cool and answered politely, which was as well, because Shuri wanted to shout "You know damned well how we are and what we've been doing!"

"I am glad to know it," T'Challa replied to Everett. "I feel certain you are anxious to return to your country and your official duties. And you, Shuri ... your lab has been needing your attention for a good two weeks. I would have mentioned it to you at the feast, but your appearance there was so brief ... we had no chance to speak. At all."

To Shuri's surprise, Everett snorted with a suppressed laugh. Nakia grinned, and even Mother smiled briefly before making her face impassive. T'Challa, however ...

"This will not do," T'Challa said. "We have duties we cannot neglect, particularly now. Shuri, what have you to say for yourself?"

"I would like to speak first, Your Majesty, if I may," said Everett.

"No, Ev - Agent Ross. I really should speak first."

"Princess, please allow me to -"

"Agent Ross, I really think -"

"Shuri!"

"Ev!"

"I want to marry your sister," Everett said, at the precise moment that Shuri said "I want to marry Agent Ross."

Shuri looked at Everett in delight and surprise. "When?"

With utter conviction, he said, "Bring in a priest."

Mother beamed. Nakia burst into laughter. T'Challa scowled.

"Your Majesty," Everett said, "It's true that I'm white, and American, and a descendant of colonisers. I'm common as dirt, and I'm a great deal older than Shuri. As far as an international alliance goes, I might be useful to you. Or I might be a liability. I don't know. But I'd be content to shovel horse manure in the royal stables every day as long as I could go home to Shuri every night."

"Allow me to speak, King T'Challa," said Mother. T'Challa nodded. "The factors you have named all pose impediments, and those are impediments that you and Shuri must work out together. I do not imagine it will be easy. But I believe that if you both truly love each other, it will be the worthiest work of your lives."

"As to the age difference, Shuri knows that I was twelve when I married King T'Chaka. Pardon me, Agent Ross. I was 18 by your reckoning of years. Therefore, I was sixteen years younger than my husband. And though we both had adjustments to make, we loved each other dearly and were happy together until the end.

"King T'Challa, I agree with Agent Ross. They must be married now. Unless you want a grand wedding, daughter?"

"Phhhht! More corsets? No thank you."

"Are you certain, daughter?"

"I am. Unless Ev ... do you want a grand wedding? Please say no, please say no, please say no."

"Really no," he laughed.

"It is as well," said Nakia. "It would lessen the impact of _The_ royal wedding."

"What other - Nakia! You said yes!"

"I did, indeed," said Nakia, smiling at T'Challa.

"Wonderful! Then you may have all the pomp, while Ev and I spend our time doing more important things ... in private."

"I see it now, Your Majesty. After you have spoken at the UN, what better followup PR than a young princess's romantic elopement with an American in Vienna? Complete with paparazzi?" said Nakia, consulting T'Challa. "The press need not know they were already married."

T'Challa made a considering hum. "Human interest."

"And glamour," said Nakia. "I can see the two of them speeding away on a Vespa, with Shuri's white lace bridal veil streaming behind her."

"Wait, what? And why Vienna?" Shuri didn't understand why or how T'Challa would be speaking at the UN, or how a public elopement would help as a PR move, but surely she should have some say in the matter. "Why not Paris? I want to be in _Paris Match_ again, only more than a paragraph of fluff like last time. And Ev, I want you to take me to America and introduce me to Elaine Welteroth."

"The editor of _Teen Vogue_? Why?"

"So that I can persuade her to devote an issue to STEM and to Wakanda fashion designers. And if I'm not on the covers of both _Science_ and _Nature_ by this time next year, then I want to know the reason for it."

Nakia laughed. "What has any of this to do with your marriage?"

"Nothing at all!" Shuri said. "I just thought today was the day I would get everything I ever wanted."

T'Challa cleared his throat. It was the most severe sound he had made since they'd entered the chamber. All eyes turned to the King. He glared at Shuri, then at Everett.

"Okoye," he said at last, "summon a priest."

* * *

After the ceremony, Queen Mother Ramonda said, "I would like to speak to my son-in-law. Alone." Even T'Challa vacated his throne, and Ramonda and Everett were alone.

"I cannot thank you enough," Ramonda said. "You have saved my child's life."

He smiled. "It was my pleasure. She saved mine, after all. It's only moral arithmetic. Does she know? Did you ever tell her?"

"No. And I never shall. And if you value your life in Wakanda, you never shall, either."

"It's strange," said Everett, "that both my mother and my mother-in-law should be of such a mystical bent. It almost makes me think there's something in it. I can't wait for the two of you to meet each other."

Queen Mother Ramonda simply smiled and shook her head. "Go to your bride, Agent Ross."


End file.
